Insecure? You're in good company.
This letter to Ezra Pound, reveals Ernest Hemingway's struggles with self-doubt.
Every year, thousands of old, plump, sunburnt men get together in Key West, Florida. Together, they celebrate Hemingway Days.
To fully embody the spirit of their literary idol, the whole drunken lot of them grow out their snow-white beards, comb what’s left of their hair, wear berets and slip into turtlenecks.
Tall tales cast big shadows.
Hemingway’s legend as a man seems to overshadow his accomplishments as a writer.
I’d wager few who make the pilgrimage out to Key West have ever cracked open and read The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms or For Whom the Bell Tolls.
He was said to have fought bulls. Shot lions. Punched out professional boxers. Stole urinals. Drank alcoholics under the table. Survived gunshot wounds. Walked away from plane crashes. And, recovered from anthrax.
However, despite the man’s devil-may-care persona, he was about as insecure as a Chihuahua in a K-9 Unit composed of Belgian Malinois—at least as a young writer yet to have made a name.
He barked louder than he bit.
Years ago, before Hemingway was Hemingway, he wrote an angsty letter to the poet Ezra Pound. Here’s a small snippet from Hemingway’s pity party…
“I am going to have to quit writing because we haven’t any money. The Transatlantic killed my chances of having a book published this fall and by next spring some son of a bitch will have copied everything I’ve written and they will simply call me another of his imitators. Now we haven’t got any money anymore I am going to have to quit writing and I never will have a book published. I feel cheerful as hell. These god damn bastards.”
While Hemingway has become a bit overhyped in recent years, I still think he is one of the greatest American writers to ever sit down at a typewriter.
I’m far from alone in this sentiment.
This makes the insecurity he suffered as a young, aspiring writer all the more liberating.
If a writer of Hemingway’s caliber was so insecure that he considered quitting his vocation, it’s perfectly okay for you to be insecure, too.
Great individuals find a way to write, create and build despite their insecurity.
By Cole Schafer